The role of Sophia in The Color Purple demands an actress who is a powerhouse singer and actor. Helen Hayes Award winner Theresa Cunningham is one such. Cunningham brought her same powerful presence to Swallowing My Shout, a one-woman show among the closing productions for this year’s District Fringe.
The skillfully crafted script is a forthright yet tender exploration of one person’s journey of survival of childhood sexual abuse and generational trauma rooted in the African American experience.
In the opening scene, Cunningham portrays a father proudly teaching his young son to forcefully kick over a stool, while simultaneously fashioning an unruly rope into a sturdy noose. Once the son demonstrates his ability to consistently kick the stool over, the father secures the noose around his own neck and instructs his son to kick the stool one last time. The son dutifully fulfills his assigned task.
Thus, Cunningham introduces us to the guilt and generational trauma that undergirds her own inherited suffering – and her attempts at first denying and eventually overcoming it. Once the sexual abuse started, her mother’s complicity was unconsciously embedded in her parental training on how to present herself “like a lady.” “Lipstick & earrings were a costume: for me or for her?” she recalled.
Among her most effective survival strategies during this journey was music.
“My favorite hiding place by far was in the music. Chopin, Grieg, Beethoven,” Cunningham tells the audience.
If European classical composers served as a “hiding place”, then the music, both secular and Pentecostal, of the Black folks sustained and nurtured her until she could regain her wholeness. That music is woven throughout the play.
Listening to Cunningham’s words brought to mind a quilt constructed from patches of trauma and resilience, folded and carefully sewn together with threads of Black music.
The songs Cunningham sang served as transitions and scene settings. Most were congregational, which in their normal context signal fellowship, joy and grief.
The songs acknowledge the shock of past unspeakable hurts. They offer solace, as well as the promise of healing. They connect the audience to Swallow My Shout on a visceral level.
Despite its strong roots in the Black Experience, Cunningham’s narrative of reclamation and communal healing remains universal.
Swallowing My Shout was part of the 2026 at District Fringe. It was directed by Valerie Baugh-Schlossberg. Regie Cabico served as Dramaturg.
Gregory Ford is the Anacostia Coordinating Council Arts & Culture Critic. An actor and singer, he is a member of the Verbal Gymnastics Playback Theater troupe. He has written for Capital Community News and continues to write for dctheaterarts.org, focusing on College and University Theater Productions. He is a clinical psychodrama practitioner. Ford lives in Northeast Boundary in Ward 7.
